SANS NewsBites is a semiweekly high-level executive summary of the most important news articles that have been published on computer security during the last week. Each news item is very briefly summarized and includes a reference on the web for detailed information, if possible.

Spend five minutes per week to keep up with the high-level perspective of all the latest security news. New issues are delivered free every Tuesday and Friday.

Volume XVIII - Issue #10

February 06, 2016

CISO Hot Topic: Communicating With CEOs and Boards of Directors: What
Works and What to Avoid. A SANS executive briefing on Tuesday, February
09, 2016 at 6:00 PM EST (23:00:00 UTC) featuring John Pescatore and Alan
Paller as well as a CISO with hard won experience. Real world data on
what works for CISOs on how to make the most of opportunities to
interact with top management to increase the effectiveness (and funding)
of their security programs. This session is live in Scottsdale and
streamed around the world. Register (no cost) at
https://www.sans.org/event/scottsdale-2016/bonus-sessions/8857/#bonus-box

- --Threat Hunting & Incident Response Summit & Training | New Orleans, LA | April 12-19, 2016 | Will you be the hunter or the prey? Two days of Summit talks and 6 courses; including the new FOR578 Cyber Threat Intelligence course. http://www.sans.org/u/dgM

TOP OF THE NEWS

A former US Department of Energy (DOE) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) employee has pleaded guilty to charges of unauthorized access and intentional damage to a protected computer for a spear phishing campaign targeting DOE employees. Charles Harvey Eccleston was trying to get the recipients to click on links that would allow malware onto the DOE's network and expose sensitive information. Eccleston worked at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) until he was fired in 2010. In 2013, Eccleston began attempting to sell sensitive energy data to people he believed to be foreign agents.

Google Expanding Safe Browsing in Chrome (February 3, 2016)

Google's safe browsing technology will now cover online advertisements that try to trick people into entering account access credentials or downloading malware that pretends to be a legitimate software update. If a site is deemed to be deceptive, Chrome will display a red screen and a text warning. -http://www.computerworld.com/article/3029735/internet/google-expands-chromes-safe-browsing-defenses-to-sniff-out-ad-scams.html[Editor's Note (Pescatore): Google has a pretty good track record over the 8 years or so that Chrome has offered the Safe Browsing functionality. It would be much more effective if ISPs would agree to do something similar at their gateways, vs. leaving to the browser vendors. The FCC Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) Working Groups seem do much talking about this, no visible action. (Paller): Good idea, John, but . . . I had the honor of co-chairing the FCC CSRIC working group on effective security practices and learned that the FCC staff is deathly afraid of asking the ISPs to do anything that would have a major positive impact on security. Why? Because the large ISPs pay their government affairs people more than $1 million each year in salary and bonus to make sure that the FCC does nothing that would cost the ISPs money. One method they use is distributing money to political action committees, and they use the resulting political power to bully the FCC staff. Sad. ]

Google Expanding Safe Browsing in Chrome (February 3, 2016)

Google's safe browsing technology will now cover online advertisements that try to trick people into entering account access credentials or downloading malware that pretends to be a legitimate software update. If a site is deemed to be deceptive, Chrome will display a red screen and a text warning. -http://www.computerworld.com/article/3029735/internet/google-expands-chromes-safe-browsing-defenses-to-sniff-out-ad-scams.html[Editor's Note (Pescatore): Google has a pretty good track record over the 8 years or so that Chrome has offered the Safe Browsing functionality. It would be much more effective if ISPs would agree to do something similar at their gateways, vs. leaving to the browser vendors. The FCC Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) Working Groups seem do much talking about this, no visible action. (Paller): Good idea, John, but . . . I had the honor of co-chairing the FCC CSRIC working group on effective security practices and learned that the FCC staff is deathly afraid of asking the ISPs to do anything that would have a major positive impact on security. Why? Because the large ISPs pay their government affairs people more than $1 million each year in salary and bonus to make sure that the FCC does nothing that would cost the ISPs money. One method they use is distributing money to political action committees, and they use the resulting political power to bully the FCC staff. Sad. ]

Netgear NMS300 Flaw (February 3 and 4, 2016)

Flaws in Netgear's NMS300 ProSafe network management system could be exploited to take control of vulnerable servers. NMS300 is available for Windows XP, 7, 8, and 10, and Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2012. The web interface has a vulnerability that allows unauthenticated users to upload and execute Java files. Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC) has released an advisory about the issue. The advisory suggests "enable[ing ] firewall rules to restrict untrusted sources from accessing the web management interface." -http://www.computerworld.com/article/3030024/security/serious-flaws-discovered-in-netgears-nms300-network-management-system.html-https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/777024[Editor's Note (Williams): Access to network management servers should be restricted to authorized users through firewall rules and IP access control lists. This isn't the only network management server attack in the news recently. WhatsUp Gold had a SQL injection via SOAP recently that allowed attackers access (-https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/753264). This trend should be a wakeup call to organizations that they need network segmentation around this highly critical network management servers. ]

Dridex Botnet Distributing Antivirus Installer (February 4, 2016)

Someone appears to have altered the distribution channel for the Dridex Trojan botnet so that links now lead to Avira Antivirus installers. Dridex was the target of a takedown operation late last year. An Avira malware expert says the company is not responsible for the activity. -http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/04/dridex_botnet_pwned/

OpenELEC Password Vulnerability (February 2 and 3, 2016)

Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC) has published an alert warning of a password vulnerability in the Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC) operating system. The flaw also affects RasPlex for Raspberry Pi devices, as it is based on the open-source OpenELEC distribution. A hard-coded root password for the Secure Shell (SSH) encryption protocol could be used to gain root access to vulnerable devices. CERT recommends several mitigations, including disabling SSH passwords access and restricting network access. -http://www.scmagazine.com/cert-poor-password-policy-leaves-openelec-operating-system-vulnerable-to-hackers/article/470962/-http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/544527[Editor's Note (Williams): Seriously? Another hard-coded password? This product is geared towards home markets, so the vulnerability probably represents little risk to enterprise networks. ]

John Pescatore was Vice President at Gartner Inc. for fourteen years. He became a director of the SANS Institute in 2013. He has worked in computer and network security since 1978 including time at the NSA and the U.S. Secret Service.

Shawn Henry is president of CrowdStrike Services. He retired as FBI Executive Assistant Director responsible for all criminal and cyber programs and investigations worldwide, as well as international operations and the FBI's critical incident response.

Suzanne Vautrinot was Commander of the 24th Air Force (AF Cyber) and now sits on the board of directors of Wells Fargo and several other major organizations.

Ed Skoudis is co-founder of CounterHack, the nation's top producer of cyber ranges, simulations, and competitive challenges, now used from high schools to the Air Force. He is also author and lead instructor of the SANS Hacker Exploits and Incident Handling course, and Penetration Testing course.

Michael Assante was Vice President and Chief Security Officer at NERC, led a key control systems group at Idaho National Labs, and was American Electric Power's CSO. He now leads the global cyber skills development program at SANS for power, oil & gas and other critical infrastructure industries.

Mark Weatherford is Chief Cybersecurity Strategist at vArmour and the former Deputy Under Secretary of Cybersecurity at the US Department of Homeland Security.

Stephen Northcutt teaches advanced courses in cyber security management; he founded the GIAC certification and was the founding President of STI, the premier skills-based cyber security graduate school, www.sans.edu.

Dr. Johannes Ullrich is Chief Technology Officer of the Internet Storm Center and Dean of the Faculty of the graduate school at the SANS Technology Institute.

William Hugh Murray is an executive consultant and trainer in Information Assurance and Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Sean McBride is Director of Analysis and co-founder of Critical Intelligence, and, while at Idaho National Laboratory, he initiated the situational awareness effort that became the ICS-CERT.

Rob Lee is the SANS Institute's top forensics instructor and director of the digital forensics and incident response research and education program at SANS (computer-forensics.sans.org).

Tom Liston is member of the Cyber Network Defense team at UAE-based Dark Matter. He is a Handler for the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center and co-author of the book Counter Hack Reloaded.

Jake Williams is a SANS course author and the founder of Rendition Infosec, with experience securing DoD, healthcare, and ICS environments.

Dr. Eric Cole is an instructor, author and fellow with The SANS Institute. He has written five books, including Insider Threat and he is a founder with Secure Anchor Consulting.

Mason Brown is one of a very small number of people in the information security field who have held a top management position in a Fortune 50 company (Alcoa). He leads SANS' efforts to raise the bar in cybersecurity education around the world.

David Hoelzer is the director of research & principal examiner for Enclave Forensics and a senior fellow with the SANS Technology Institute.

Gal Shpantzer is a trusted advisor to CSOs of large corporations, technology startups, Ivy League universities and non-profits specializing in critical infrastructure protection. Gal created the Security Outliers project in 2009, focusing on the role of culture in risk management outcomes and contributes to the Infosec Burnout project.

Eric Cornelius is Director of Critical Infrastructure and ICS at Cylance, and earlier served as deputy director and chief technical analyst for the Control Systems Security Program at the US Department of Homeland Security.

Alan Paller is director of research at the SANS Institute.

Brian Honan is an independent security consultant based in Dublin, Ireland.

David Turley is SANS operations manager and serves as production manager and final editor on SANS NewsBites.

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